


one every minute

by systemscheck



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, Mech Preg (Transformers)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21834913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/systemscheck/pseuds/systemscheck
Summary: Twenty-three percent of successful spark merges result in the formation of a viable neospark. Having served in the medical corps for what felt like eons but was actually closer to only five million years, Ratchet knew the math. He just hadn’t expected to be included in that particular statistic.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 45





	one every minute

**Author's Note:**

> Have some canon salad with extra angst dressing.

Ratchet was a decent pilot but there was no outflying someone whose wings were literally a part of them. Also, teleportation. Skywarp paced himself to linger a little behind until Ratchet’s aircraft had cleared the asteroid field and then he could pop inside without all that rock interfering with his ability to triangulate. 

This kind of obstacle normally posed no challenge to his targeting module though it wasn’t like Skywarp normally tried teleporting when half his systems were swimming in engex. Starscream always did get supremely ticked off whenever he fragged up manoeuvres, and getting stuck inside walls was also kinda embarrassing. 

Skywarp wasn’t looking for anything more troublesome than a pick-me-up at the dingy space station meekly skirting the edges of wild space. He’d been out on patrol, solo, long enough for the boredom to make his circuitry twitch. He was due for a break anyway, and it wasn’t like anything interesting would actually happen in his assigned quadrant while he nipped down for a quick one. Spotting a lone Autobot loitering around hadn’t figured into his plans for the night cycle at all. Still, even while mildly intoxicated, Skywarp could recognize a great opportunity when he saw one. He’d given chase at once, albeit clumsily. 

The pursuit had turned aerial once Ratchet managed to get to his shuttle, which hadn’t been very difficult since Skywarp was caught up with paying his bar tab. Like any self-respecting Decepticon he was all too ready to shoot up the place and run, but it had a strict no-weapons policy. Skywarp didn’t want to be blacklisted from yet another bar. He’d flung a handful of credit chits at the staff and zoomed off. 

Just ahead of him, the small orange craft dodged and rolled past asteroids several times its size, making for the clear patch that would allow it to make the jump to hyperspace. 

Skywarp wasn’t going to let that happen. He focused, momentarily shut off his visual feed and activated his warp drive. The world blurred around him and he materialised inside the ship, right behind the pilot’s chair. He didn’t even throw up! 

To his credit, Ratchet reacted with unexpected speed. He stood up and slammed his elbow backwards into Skywarp’s face, throwing all his weight into the blow. Skywarp staggered but managed to keep his balance. So much for trying to make a sneak attack. Skywarp flashed out of existence just as Ratchet fired at him and materialised directly above the Autobot, dropping down to pin Ratchet against the floor. 

The missed shot hit the bulkhead and left a neat little scorch mark.

Ratchet didn’t get a chance to push him off before Skywarp was sliding a blade into the vulnerable gap between collar and throat cabling. With just a flick of his hand, Skywarp could sever the connection between brain module and spark. It wouldn’t kill Ratchet immediately but he knew that the effect would be extremely disorienting, at least in the scant moments before he lost too much energon to maintain consciousness. 

Skywarp didn’t know why he was hesitating. He could see his reflection in the cracked windshield of Ratchet’s chest, open-mouthed and panting. 

“Don’t move,” he ordered. 

Ratchet cracked open one optic. “Alright,” he said, sounding far too snide for someone Skywarp could offline at his leisure. “Got it. Guess I’d be dying of suspense before you actually get around to it, huh.” 

Skywarp scowled and fished out the cuffs that had been jangling around in his subspace since forever. They snapped perfectly on Ratchet’s wrists, securing his arms behind his back without any wriggle room to spare. And just like that, Skywarp had captured an Autobot all on his own. His nose was a little dented. Skywarp suppressed the urge to fuss at it and strolled over to the control panel of the ship. Destroying its comms and adjusting the navigation system was a few minute’s work and then he was free to reign over the little ship. Skywarp slouched back into the pilot’s chair with a deliberately loud sigh. 

“Oi, medic,” Skywarp called out. “Thanks for keeping the seat warm for me.” 

Ratchet ignored him, which stung a little but it wasn’t like Skywarp didn’t have anyone better to talk to. 

He opened up the main patrol channel and bragged to them about the ridiculously easy prisoner acquisition, leaving out the part about Ratchet bonking his nose. 

_Okay_ , Thundercracker replied. _Have you checked to see if he’s infected with a coding virus? Wired to explode? Or how about the tracking beacon most important Autobots have stuck somewhere inside their frames?_

Skywarp yelped, glad that his comm unit wasn’t set to pick up audio and went about doing all those things. The last bit was proving to be tricky, though. He scanned Ratchet five times over and didn’t find anything capable of emitting long-range signals. 

It wasn’t something he liked making people do, but Skywarp didn’t see any other option. He rapped his knuckles against the medic’s chassis.

“Open up,” Skywarp ordered, and in case that wasn’t clear enough he went on to say, “Show me your spark chamber.” 

Ratchet shuddered. He took a step back. Stuck between Skywarp and the edge of the ship, there was nowhere else to go. 

Skywarp leaned in, his smug face filling the entirety of Ratchet’s field of vision. 

Ratchet waited until Skywarp was close enough for his features to turn blurry before surging forward and slamming their helms together. Skywarp fell on his aft and held up his arms defensively though it didn’t help much when Ratchet started kicking him. He didn’t get a chance to fight back, or even think about reaching for his knife again. Every part of Skywarp was focused on blocking the next blow and protecting his internals from this weirdly vicious Autobot. And to think they had most enemy medics classified as non-combatants...Ratchet wasn’t a very strong mech by any means but he made sure every strike counted, targeting the most vulnerable and poorly-armoured sections of Skywarp’s frame. Skywarp coughed. Pink splattered onto the floor. Ratchet’s foot connected with the side of Skywarp’s head and sent him crashing into the bottom of a display console. 

When Skywarp’s optical feed finally stopped fritzing he was able to see Ratchet advancing upon him with an expression that promised murder. Skywarp looked around desperately. His death, when he was sloshed enough to contemplate it, had always been a gruesomely dramatic event in his imagination. Going out under a hail of enemy fire and taking loads of them along with him, that sort of thing. Meeting his end at the hands of some lame medic was going to be the greatest tragedy ever. 

Skywarp groaned. He wondered if he should close his eyes. 

Ratchet only rested his heavy foot onto Skywarp’s cockpit, exerting just the right amount of pressure to firmly pin Skywarp into place and hint that it would be all too simple to press down a little harder and hurt him a lot more. 

“Surrender,” Ratchet said coldly. 

Skywarp ran a noisy exhaust cycle. He wasn’t aware of when his ventilation had stalled but it felt good to start again. With some reluctance Skywarp squelched his initial impulse to tell the Autobot to go jump into a smelter. Ratchet didn’t seem inclined to accept any other answer and let him live. As far as Skywarp mouthed the party line of Decepticon strength and resistance, he didn’t actually want to offline like this. 

Skywarp nodded. He regretted the movement almost immediately. His head hurt. 

“Say that you won’t cause any more trouble.” Ratchet’s gaze was hard, and he kept Skywarp flat on the ground until the seeker agreed. It took Skywarp a few tries to remember how to make his vocaliser work again. 

Ratchet made Skywarp unlock his cuffs. Skywarp tucked them away with a pang, mourning the bragging rights that should have been his. Yet, even if an opportunity to overpower the Autobot came up, Skywarp doubted he would take it. Disregarding the low energy level he currently operated at, summoning enough motivation to face Ratchet’s spirited attacks was difficult. Skywarp obediently plopped down at the spot Ratchet pointed to. 

Miraculously, the ship hadn’t collided with anything during their brief scuffle. Ratchet steered it out of the asteroid field and turned around to fix a tired glare at Skywarp. Leaning against the chair that Skywarp had occupied for all of five and a half wonderful astrominutes, Ratchet suddenly looked incredibly defeated. 

“Look,” he said. “I don’t really want to take you prisoner. Pretend you never saw me and I’d let you go back to your buddies, okay?” 

Skywarp was all too ready to forget this humiliating incident, but he didn’t think that he was ready to face the vacuum of deep space, at least until self-repair had tackled the bunch of damage reports he could see cluttering up the corner of his HUD. 

“Yeah, whatever. I need a couple of hours before I’m flight-capable, though.”

Ratchet glowered for a moment like he thought that would make Skywarp’s nanites fix himself faster. 

Skywarp shrugged. He wasn’t any happier about the situation. It wasn’t his fault that Ratchet had basically handed his aft to him, like what had even gotten into that Autobot. 

Ratchet scrubbed a hand down his face. “Fine,” he ground out. “As long as you stay on this ship and in my company, you have to abide by my rules. No weapons. No defiance. No external communication with any Decepticons. The instant your engines become functional again I’m showing you the airlock.” 

“Sounds good to me.” 

Skywarp made a show of disabling the guns mounted on his forearms and switching off his comm unit. The longer he could delay having to explain things to his side, the better. 

#

As time slid by slower than a metrotitan’s lumbering footsteps, Ratchet began to wish that he had included ‘no talking’ in his instructions. Skywarp simply could not bear letting more than a few moments pass without unnecessary chatter. Threatening to weld his mouth shut didn’t work when Skywarp pointed out that doing so would be considered torture. Ratchet didn’t want more weight on his conscience, especially once the panic lost its grip on his mind and allowed him to recognize that self-defense had morphed into something uncomfortably brutal. 

The ship dropped out of hyperspeed into the shadow of a small moon. Nestled in the basin of one crater was a collection of half-domes, artificial biomes that supported the tiny figures moving around inside. 

“Do you know your way around this place,” Ratchet suddenly called out. 

Skywarp grinned. The worry that had been simmering at the back of his mind evaporated. Ratchet wasn’t actually on some kind of secret mission that Skywarp accidentally intercepted. Nobody visited semi-illegal moonlets intent on getting anything more insidious than a good time. 

“Oh yeah, totally,” Skywarp said. “You wanna get drunk before or after visiting the strip clubs?” 

Decepticons could always be counted on to jump to the worst possible conclusions. 

“Neither,” Ratchet finally said. “Just tell me if there’s some kind of clinic available.” 

Skywarp gawped. 

“You’re a medic. And, and you’re not even hurt—you hurt me,” Skywarp exclaimed. 

Ratchet rubbed the back of his head. “Right, sorry about that. I’m running guardian programming.”

Skywarp must have looked just as confused as he felt, for Ratchet elaborated. 

“A natural compulsion to protect one’s young. I’m afraid it’s an unavoidable aspect of carrying.”

Skywarp’s incredulity morphed into outright disbelief. And, if he was being honest, reluctant relief to learn that getting trashed by the Autobot had been a fluke. 

“Uh huh. Cool.”

“No, not cool at all,” Ratchet snapped. 

He sagged where he stood. “This has been a very stressful seventy-two hours.”

Skywarp nodded empathetically. 

#

Ratchet set a brisk pace. Skywarp had longer legs and would normally have no trouble following along, but the massive crowds milling about refused to make way for his broad wingspan and he didn’t think that Ratchet would be happy if he shot some of the lifeforms to send a message. 

They reached the city’s mechanical quarter without incident. Ratchet still didn’t relax. 

“You need to take better care of your boyfriend,” the three-legged nurse said as they accompanied Ratchet out of the examination room. Skywarp stared. He didn’t even know where to begin correcting the alien. 

“If it’s any consolation, I find that idea equally distasteful,” Ratchet said as he sat beside the seeker. The bench creaked under their combined weight. 

“What now,” Skywarp asked. He’d been stuck in the dim waiting area for ages and was yearning to leave, but a self-diagnostic revealed that only one thruster was good to go. 

“Wait for the scans to be processed.”

Ratchet sighed. “We used to have the equipment for this sort of thing, but then the Kalis air raids started and all non-essential hardware was left behind.” 

Skywarp leaned back and crossed his arms. 

“That stuff happened before my time,” he said. “Don’t try and pin it on me.” 

Genuine surprise flashed over Ratchet’s face. “When did you join the Decepticons?”

Skywarp laughed. “I was built a Decepticon.” 

Ratchet nodded slowly. “So, would you consider my sparkling to be an Autobot?”

Skywarp didn’t understand. 

“It’s just a sparkling. It can’t think for itself or anything.” Privately, Skywarp thought that nobody in their right mind would choose to be anything other than a Decepticon. He was on the side with multiple combiner teams and a vision to take over the entire freaking galaxy, while all Ratchet had going for him was trailing after some peace-loving religious figurehead. 

“Mmmm,” Ratchet said. “Do you think you were given fair warning about life as a Con?” 

“I’m no traitor,” Skywarp hissed. “If you’re trying to trick me I’d disassemble your brain module the messy way faster than Prime can tell people to roll over.” 

“Ah, am I interrupting something..?”

The same nurse from before was at the doorway, holding a sheath of papers. Photographs, to be exact. Skwarp scrambled away from where he’d been pressed up against Ratchet, threateningly, and sulked. 

Ratchet ignored him and walked over to the nurse. 

In the end, curiosity won out. Skywarp peered over Ratchet’s shoulder. 

“Stop breathing on me,” Ratchet said and made Skywarp sit down. 

Skywarp tried to be careful as he touched the flimsy material, but plant-based fibres had a woefully low tensile strength. 

“Whoops.” 

Ratchet took back the torn photograph without comment. 

“I can’t believe this place is so backwards. Have they never heard of datapads?” 

“I’d asked for prints,” Ratchet said mildly. “Untraceable, and easily destroyed.” 

The medic pored through the scans for a little while longer before stowing them away. Skywarp didn’t see what was so interesting about the fuzzy mote of light barely visible in the negatives. He could hardly believe that it was supposed to be a person, but apparently that was how everyone started out until they got implanted into frames. 

“I’ve never seen a sparkling up close,” Skywarp said. “Unless you count the ones we dug up from rubble and those were um, usually sort of squished.” 

Ratchet shuttered his optics. “I can imagine.” He didn’t want to. Almost unconsciously his hands had wandered to clasp around his midsection protectively. 

“Stay close to me,” Ratchet said. “Exposure to stable and positive energy fields is crucial for development.” Skywarp beamed. 

“You’re going to crush me,” Ratchet complained, but he didn’t make any more noise when Skywarp cuddled up to his side, angling his wings so that they wouldn’t smack the grounder.  
“It’s not a life I would choose for anyone,” Ratchet said quietly. “I’m old. There’s a significant possibility that the sparkling will simply...snuff out, on its own, but I don’t want to bank on that. I don’t want another person to be drawn into this war.”

“I could just say that you hacked into the ship’s coolant system and drank liquid nitrogen,” Skywarp said, remembering the favoured method of suicide for Autobot saboteurs. It made their components shatter into hundreds of tiny little shards, totally unfit for data recovery. “Nobody would even think to look for a body. You could just get away from everything and uh, raise the sparkling on your own.” 

“I have responsibilities. It should be a concept that you aren’t wholly unfamiliar with, Skywarp.” 

Skywarp let the dig slide. Daringly, he rested a hand on Ratchet’s shoulder. 

“If there’s anything I could do—” 

“It’s dangerous,” Ratchet said, looking out of the dirty window where a hundred thousand species roamed the streets. “Spark transfer. You’d be incubating the sparkling in lieu of me.” 

#

This time, Ratchet unfolded his chestplates without any prompting. The radiance of his whirling spark bleached the inside of the ship and drained their surroundings of color. Merely looking at it dazzled Skywarp’s optics painfully. He had never carried anything particularly important: bombs. Secrets. The occasional hostage. He was scared, but he also knew that having to trust someone like this was probably worse for Ratchet. 

Skywarp took a deep breath and leaned into the light.


End file.
